1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medicine packing apparatus which separately supplies a medicine required for each application time, and packs it with packing paper, such as a tablet packing apparatus and a powdered medicine packing apparatus used in medical facilities such as hospitals and pharmacies, and more particularly concerns a medicine packing apparatus having which functions to attach and detach medicine containers housing medicines, such as tablets and capsules, to and from a shelf section on a medicine supplying shelf.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventional medicine packing apparatus has been known in which medicines are classified based upon the kinds, and housed in medicine containers, and each of the medicine containers is attached to any one of a plurality of shelves. In the medicine packing apparatus of this type, based upon the shelf number applied to each shelf, a required medicine is supplied from the corresponding medicine container, and packed.
For example, Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 1-14081 discloses a medicine automatic packing apparatus in which codes are assigned to respective medicine containers, and through a key operation on an operation apparatus, a desired medicine container placed in a predetermined position can be selected.
Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 3-41208 discloses a tablet supplying apparatus in which, based upon positional information in accordance with identifying information of each tablet feeder, a required tablet feeder is specified, and the corresponding tablet is supplied.
Japanese Patent No. 2933837 discloses a medicine packing apparatus in which, upon attaching a medicine container, medicine data is read and the attached place is stored, so that, based upon the attached place data of each medicine, a desired medicine is supplied and packed.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional medicine packing apparatuses, consideration has not been sufficiently given to the operability at the time of exchanging medicine containers. In other words, although information of each medicine itself is important, the shelf numbers for the respective medicines are changed by using a maintenance screen; therefore, it is impossible to directly change the medicine corresponding to each shelf number. In an actual case, a pharmacist, that is, the operator needs to know the corresponding relationship between each shelf number and the corresponding medicine, and this imposes serious loads on the operator. Moreover, the operation of the maintenance screen is complicated, and tends to cause input mistakes, with the result that it is difficult for the pharmacist to operate it during a medicine packing process. Further, it is also difficult for the pharmacist to confirm the operations of attaching and detaching a medicine container to and from the corresponding shelf section. For this reason, there has been a demand for a system for detecting the presence or absence of a medicine container on a shelf section and for displaying the shelf section to which a medicine is attached or the shelf section from which a medicine is detached.
In particular, in the case of a small-size medicine packing apparatus, since there are few shelf sections of medicine supplying shelves and since the medicine containers are small, the exchange of medicine containers is frequently carried out, causing a higher probability of attaching mistakes of medicine containers to the shelf sections.